For the industrial dimensional control of produced parts or prototypes, different types of measurement equipment is used. Some equipment, such as microscopes or profile projectors, takes measures of the part without physically touching it, using a non-contacting technique. Other equipment, such as dial gauges or Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMMs), actually touch the part while taking the measurements.
All this equipment can also be divided in another way: manual, motorized or Computer Numerical Controlled (CNC):                1. Manual equipment requires the user to manually make the measurement by physically handling the equipment and the part during the measurement.        2. Motorized equipment uses motors controlled by the user to displace certain parts of the equipment in order to make the measurement on the part in consideration.        3. In CNC equipment there are also motors that drive parts of the equipment for performing the measurement, but instead of a single displacement controlled by the user, a sequence of displacements can be carried out by the equipment for performing multiple measurements. This sequence is performed under the direction of a measurement program or macro. A macro consists generally of displacement commands, point measurement commands and feature (e.g. plane, slot, hole, etc) calculation and evaluation (i.e. comparison with the nominal value) commands. The macro is built by the user beforehand and can be repeated an indefinite number of times on the same part or on a (quite) similar part. During the execution of the macro the measurement equipment runs autonomously, but the part being measured remains physically present in the measurement equipment.        
Certain measurement equipment can be a combination of manual, motorized and/or CNC.
Three-dimensional control in industry is mostly carried out by CMMs, because of their flexibility and accuracy. All CNC-CMMS have the capability of building and executing macros, and are widely used and standardized in industry. The industry standard language for these macros is DMIS (Dimensional Measuring Interface Standard). Macros for most industrial parts have been written in the last 20 years. Macros specific for parts would also be available within the company manufacturing these parts.
Unfortunately, the measurement equipment is expensive, slow, but a vital part of the ISO 9002 systems of their users.
The macros can be created in two different ways:                1. Teach-in method: The user controls the movements and actions (e.g. taking measurements) of the measurement equipment. Each movement and action is recorded on to a storage medium, ultimately as a macro so the measurement equipment can re-perform these any number of times by reading the macro. In addition to recording movements and actions, the macro may be programmed to perform mathematical computations on the results of the measurements such as ‘compute a circle through the 3 measured points’ or ‘compare the diameter of the computed circle with a certain value’. Thus, a sequence of displacements, measurements, computations and comparisons constitute the macro.        2. Off-line method: Using the part drawings of the object or feature on paper, or using the Computer Aided Design (CAD) model of the part, the user can manually build a macro by writing down the sequence of macro commands. The displacements, measurements, computations and comparisons, the equipment has to carry out derived therefrom constitute the macro.        
Although macros can be written as described above, it is an advantage for a manufacturer to also be able to use a macro from the library of prewritten macros, since creating a macro can be time consuming and technically demanding.
Each time the macro is executed, the part being measured has to be physically present in the measurement equipment. This requirement has some organisational and financial drawbacks as follows.                1. Measurement equipment availability: The high expense of precision engineered measurement equipment means often a parts manufacture will have a minimum number of measurement equipment devices, which are kept in constant operation often to a strict schedule. If, once in receipt of evaluation of the macro measurements results, other measurements are deemed necessary, space has to be found in the machine-time schedule to re-measure the part. This might require a substantial delay, and disruption to the schedule which has financial repercussions.        2. Communication in a world wide production environment: The manufacturer of a physical object might be located in a part of the world that is far from the client who specified the dimensions of the part. If there is a quality control issue with the part, the part has to be shipped back to the manufacturer for further analysis where the measurement equipment for evaluation is usually sited. The shipping and remeasuring causes substantial delays to the client, and the delays might have cost implications.        
It is an aim of the invention to provide a method and device that enables a physical object to be evaluated wherein neither the physical object, nor measurement equipment capable of evaluating a physical object are required to be present during evaluation. It is a further aim to that the method and device take advantage of the substantial archive of macros that is available now and in the future to automate the evaluation of the object.